Any building environment prone to vandalism requires special fire- and life-safety systems design considerations. In the case of prisons and correctional facilities, fire and life safety response planning differs from other high-abuse environments because the majority of the occupants are behind locked doors.

Failure by the Virgin Islands Bureau of Corrections to comply with 25 years of court orders has prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to file a motion in U.S. District Court to take over the operations of a prison there.

CHARLESTON, W. Va. — West Virginia lawmakers learned that an all-time high of 1,700 people sentenced to prison remain in jails because of a lack of bed space at state Division of Corrections facilities, and that number is projected to nearly double to 3,200 in five years.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — After spending over a year in Michigan prisons to relieve overcrowding, about 1,100 Pennsylvania inmates have been brought back to their home state, according to Pennsylvania officials.

ATLANTA — A pharmaceutical company in India that supplied a key lethal injection drug to at least one U.S. state and contacted to a half dozen others announced it is no longer selling the drug to American prison officials.

POTTSVILLE, Pa. — With plans to build a county prerelease center no longer on the table, Schuylkill County commissioners gave County Administrator Mark Scarbinsky approval during a recent prison board meeting to renegotiate a multi-year contract between the county and Harrisburg-based Prime Care Medical Inc.